1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an ink-jet printing cloth, an ink-jet printing process and a print obtained by the ink-jet printing process.
2. Related Background Art
Besides screen printing and roller printing, ink-jet printing has heretofore been known as a process of printing on cloth. Since the ink-jet printing is a system of which any plate such as a screen or a design roller is not required, it is fit for the multi-kind small-quantity production. The techniques required of the ink-jet printing are greatly different from those of the screen and roller printing. This is caused by such differences in system that the optimum value of viscosity among properties of inks used in the ink-jet printing is greatly different from that of textile printing inks used in screen printing or the like and is considerably low, that the ink-jet printing requires to take steps as to reliability such as clogging of a head, so-called additive color process, in which a few inks of different colors are shot on the same position so as to overlap each other, is conducted, and that dots of inks are very small.
Various investigations have thus been attempted as to methods of such ink-jet printing, in particular, improvement in coloring, prevention of bleeding and the like. For example, with respect to cloth used in such a printing process, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 4-59282 discloses an ink-jet printing cloth formed of a hydrophilic fiber material and containing 0.1 to 3% by weight of a surfactant. According to the cloth subjected to such a treatment, inks are absorbed in the interior of fiber by diffusion, and so the migration length of the inks becomes comparatively short, and great bleeding is prevented to some extent. However, such a cloth is (unfavorable to improvement in coloring ability because dyes penetrate into the interior of the fiber. Even when a shot-in ink quality is increased to raise the color depth of the resulting print, the color depth on the surface thereof cannot be enhanced because the inks are absorbed in the interior of the cloth.
Even when no surfactant is used, inks are absorbed in the interior of such a cloth like the above unless a substance for decelerating time of water absorption is applied to the cloth, so that the color depth on the surface of the resulting print cannot be enhanced.
On the other hand, Japanese Patent Publication No. 63-31593 discloses a textile printing method in which inks each having a viscosity of 200 cP or lower and a surface tension of 30 to 70 dyn/cm, and a cloth having a water repellency of 50 marks or more as measured in accordance with JIS L 1079 are used. Since this printing method is based on thinking that the penetration of inks into the interior of fiber is prevented to prevent the diffusion of dyes, thereby improving coloring, the improvement in a coloring ability is recognized to some extent. However, the method involves problems such as (1) it takes a long time to dry the inks, and (2) an area factor (a proportion of dots per unit area) becomes small because the inks do not spread, and so the coloring ability is limited.
As described above, the prior art techniques have been able to satisfy individual performance characteristics required of the ink-jet printing process for obtaining excellent prints to some extent, but have been unable to satisfy the various performance characteristics at the same time.